Spent fuel storage has traditionally been part of the responsibility of the operator of commercial nuclear plants. Many utilities anticipated that by this time there would be commercially accessible fuel reprocessing plants available and accordingly designed and constructed relatively small spent fuel pools. In some instances the storage pools are nearly full and further plant operations may have to be halted unless additional spent fuel can be disposed of. This storage problem has been recognized along with the short term solution of fuel consolidation by which fuel assemblies are disassembled and their components are compacted and canistered such that the volume occupied by the spent fuel elements is substantially reduced.
So far as we know, most fuel rod consolidation systems have been designed with the fuel assembly axis vertically disposed to conform to the spent fuel pool physical space parameters.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,446,098 is an example of a system in which the consolidation is shown as being carried out with the fuel assemblies and rods disposed in a vertical orientation, although horizontal consolidation is said to be equally effective.
It is our belief that there are advantages to providing a basically horizontal system for rod removal and consolidation. A horizontal system according to our invention need be no more than approximately 30 feet (9 m) in length. Some pools have space available to accommodate this length. A horizontal system according to our invention may also be supported off the operating floor, or from empty storage racks requiring no floor space in reactor spent fuel pools. Further the system can be designed to eliminate any electrical power supplies required for operation and the system can be operated and actuated by long-handle tooling in reactor pools, or by impact wrenches and other tools in dry-hot cells.
Accordingly, it is the aim of our invention to provide a horizontal fuel rod consolidation system and method for handling spent fuel rods from a single fuel assembly at one time.